You have heard that it was said to those of old, "You shall not murder. Anyone who commits murder shall be liable to judgment." But I say to you that everyone who grows angry with a brother or a sister shall be liable to judgment. Whoever insults a brother or a sister shall be liable to the Sanhedrin. And whoever says "You fool" shall be liable to the fires of hell [literally, "the Gehenna of fire"].

You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may become children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise upon the wicked and upon the good, and sends rain upon the just and the unjust alike."

Anyone claiming to be in the light and who nevertheless hates a brother or a sister is still in darkness. ...Anyone hating his or her brother or sister is in darkness, and walks in darkness, and does not know where he or she is going, because the darkness has blinded his or her eyes.

If anyone should say "I love God" and yet hate his or her brother or sister, he or she is a liar. For anyone who does not love the brother or sister whom he or she has seen cannot love the God whom he or she has not seen."

Mr. Anderson (I absolutely, categorically refuse to use the honorific "Reverend" in reference to this man, as I find in him nothing worthy of reverence) claims to be a minister and is one of the fundamentalist types who has begun praying and hoping for the president to die. This man may have a church, and claim to be preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but it's fairly obvious to me (and should be so to anyone who has ever actually read the Gospels) that he is a liar. Indeed, the words of the Beloved Disciple I quoted above convict Mr. Anderson of being a liar out of his own mouth, since he has stated elsewhere that he hates President Obama and everything he stands for.

As for Mr. Anderson, if that is the stance he's going to take about gay people (and he really should go back and re-read his Bible, since the prohibition he's referencing only speaks of men who have sex with other men--it never mentions lesbians), then here are a few of the other things he had better not have done himself, or for doing which he should be demanding that people be put to death:

Wednesday, 23 July 2008

It's another good day to be me. Yesterday, Reuters announced that an online consortium will virtually "reassemble" the oldest extant manuscript of the Bible, the Codex Sinaiticus. Written sometime in the early 4th century (probably in Alexandria, or at least following an Alexandrian text), this massive volume contained both the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures in Greek, plus the Epistle of Barnabas and parts of another early Christian document known as the Shepherd of Hermas. The volume is called "Sinaiticus" because at one point it was kept in the Monastery of St. Catherine near Mount Sinai.

In the 19th century, a German scholar named Constantin von Tischendorf claimed to have seen some parchment leaves in a wastebasket that were about to be burned, and recognized them as belonging to the Septuagint, as the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures is called (from the tradition that it was translated from Hebrew by a group of seventy scholars; "septuaginta" in Latin means seventy). He got the monks to let him take some of the leaves back home with him to Leipzig, where they still live in the university library. As Tischendorf talked about his find and published work drawn from the leaves he'd "rescued," more scholars went to the monastery (including Tischendorf himself, several times), in an attempt to find more of it. The monks eventually parted with the codex, which Tischendorf sent to Tsar Alexander II, who had it published in facsimile.

After the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty, and when the fledgling Soviet Union was hard up for hard cash, they sold the volume to the British Library for a hundred thousand pounds in 1933. That's probably well in excess of a million dollars in modern currency, which gives some idea of the importance of this manuscript. Subsequently, during renovations at the monastery, an additional dozen leaves were discovered in a crypt. Since then, those 12 leaves have remained at the monastery, while fragments of three leaves are in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg. Tischendorf's 43 leaves are in the collections at Leipzig University, and the British Library has the remaining 347.

Hence my excitement at the announcement that they're going to be digitized and presented online. For anybody who's ever read a scholarly edition of the Christian Scriptures in the original, you'll see the sigil for this codex all over the place: the Hebrew letter aleph, designating this as the first extant manuscript. It's next to impossible to get permission to work with the original text, it's so valuable. According to the wiki entry, only four scholars have been allowed the privilege in the last 20 years. Putting it online makes it available to the whole scholarly community--and without the need to travel to four countries to see all the pieces that still survive.

Sunday, 13 July 2008

If the events of the past week are any indication, clearly I should have extended my vacation. It was really quite pleasant not to wake up every morning to further grim economic and political news, and to stay in touch with things that really matter--like friends, and nature, and good food. Unfortunately, as is always the case, time away ends and we have to come, willy-nilly, back to what we are pleased to designate the "real" world.

It seems that one of the things that happened while I was gone was a brouhaha between PZ Myers and William Donohue and his so-called Catholic League. (No, I am absolutely not linking to either one of them: I categorically refuse to drive any more traffic to either place. Use teh Google if you want to get more details.) The brouhaha actually spilled over into last week, and since I've been commenting on it all over Left Blogistan, I figured I might as well write about it here where at least I can keep track of all the comments a little easier.

To reduce a great deal of sound and fury that might have signified little or nothing had not two ginormous egos gotten involved into something a little less cumbersome, here's a quick summary of the events as I understand them. A college student in Florida (who may or may not be Catholic; I haven't seen any clarification on that point) went to Mass and took Communion. But instead of consuming the Eucharist, he held on to it to show a friend (or so he says). This action upset a few people at the parish in question, and apparently there was some remonstration with the young man, who did, eventually, give back the host in question. Had it stayed there, no one not involved in the parish in question would likely ever have heard about it.

It did not, however, stay there. Bill DonoWho, blowhard and media-hog extraordinaire, got involved. I don't know how he found out about the incident, but he did, and he and some of his minions began calling for disciplinary action against the student in question. It is at least alleged that some of the people from DonoWho's group made death threats against the student--he has gone on record as saying that he felt his life was in danger. DonoWho himself merely called for the student to be disciplined, and hoped that expulsion would be on the table as one of the possible penalties.

That this reaction on the part of DonoWho and his minions is over-the-top is self-evident. But here, too, this mess might have stopped--had the other supersized ego not gotten involved: to wit, PZ Myers. PZ, for those of you who are not familiar with him, is a biology professor at a small state institution in Minnesota. He is also an avowed atheist. I want to make it very clear before continuing that I have absolutely not the slightest problem with PZ's atheism. I could wish, however, that PZ could manage to find a similar level of toleration for my Catholicism, as further details will more than amply demonstrate.

Thursday, 10 January 2008

I don't know who's responsible for it, but I would very much like to take him or her out for a drink--and then plant a big sloppy wet one right on his/her lips. The First Freedom First campaign, a joint effort of the Interfaith Alliance and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, has put together an amazing ad campaign of television and print media ads urging (largely presidential, but the principle applies up and down the electoral chain as far as I'm concerned) candidates to protect Americans' religious freedom--including their right to be free from religion in their day-to-day lives, and their right not to have their government co-opted by people of one particular (and particularly narrow) faith.

There are three spots at the YouTube link provided above. Two feature Jack Klugman, and one features James Whitmore. Whitmore's spot and one of Klugman's come in both 30-second and 60-second varieties. The ads will be running in South Carolina ahead of their primary election later this month.

It's things like this campaign that make me think this nation might be worth saving--and that there are still a few people left in it who want to make the effort. It's things like this campaign that let me know the internet is a positive force in society and isn't just a convenient vehicle for endless spam about breast or penis enlargement, casino gambling, every possible variety of pornography, and how to get rich quickly by buying a diploma from a "prestigious online university" or getting in touch with the confidential agent for a relative of some fabulously wealthy deceased dictator who needs a convenient place to launder some ill-gotten gains.

This is what the First Amendment means. It means that I cannot be prevented from practicing my religious faith as I feel called to do, and neither can I be forced to worship in any way that I consider to be invalid or improper. But neither can I insist that everyone else practice either my faith, or in exactly the same way I do. My atheist neighbor has the right not to worship at all. He can't force me to convert to his beliefs, and neither can I force him to convert to mine. That's the sheer beauty of the system the Framers put in place when they drew up the Constitution. It gives everyone living within the borders of this nation the freedom to make his or her own choices about what to believe in and how to live in accordance with those beliefs.

It is an outright lie, and worse, one intended to deceive people, that the United States was founded as a "Christian" nation. Want proof of that? It's right there in black and white in the Treaty of Tripoli, which was signed November 4, 1796, approved by President John Adams, and unanimously ratified by the Senate on June 10, 1797. Article 11 of that treaty, as translated from the Arabic original, reads:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

The Christianists, and their dupes or masters (I'm not sure which term is most appropriate) in Congress behind the infamous H. Res. 888 [PDF link], would have us believe that this treaty is of little importance and that yes, indeed, Virginia, the United States was most definitely founded as a "Christian nation." The problem with that argument (if such a thin, paltry thread can legitimately be called by that name) begins with the fact that nowhere in any of our foundational documents is anything said about our allegedly Christian roots. There are only a handful of references to God in either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, and those that are present are vague, euphemistic, and almost certainly not intended to refer to the god worshiped by the Christianists. But the bigger problem for their line of rhetoric can be found in the second clause of Article VI of the Constitution:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land...

Tuesday, 04 December 2007

Fortunately for my well-being, when I heard those sentiments expressed on NPR's "Morning Edition" this morning, I was neither shaving, brushing my teeth, nor gulping down breakfast. If I had been doing any one or more of those things, it could potentially have been ugly. As it was, I did a spit take.

Apparently there is a group of people out there, some of whose more flamboyant representatives are due to head to Washington this week for a little chat with some congressional committees looking into the question of whether or not they're abusing their status as charitable organizations, preaching what I'll call for lack of a better expression, the Gospel according to St. Mammon. (I'll probably have to do another fifty years in Purgatory for that one.) The one NPR quoted was Creflo Dollar--a name hitherto familiar to me only in that I'd seen it come up a few times on television listings and wondered if it could possibly be real. Apparently it is not only real, but entirely apt, given that Mr. Dollar (I refuse to call such a man "reverend") preaches to his flock that God can get them out of debt, make them wealthy, and give them everything they want.

God as ATM. Funny, but that wasn't one of the divine attributes we discussed when I was taking instruction in Catholicism. Didn't show up in any of my religion or philosophy of religion classes either. And despite being thoroughly familiar with the canonical Gospels both in translation and in the original Greek, I don't recall running across that description in there, either. As for Mr. Dollar's assertion that Jesus wasn't poor, can only hope that it's because he's been so busy ministering to fleecing his flock that he overlooked all those times Jesus talked about having nowhere to lay his head--or especially all those times Jesus told other people to sell everything they had and give the proceeds to the poor.

Saturday, 17 November 2007

At the end of the public portion of its annual meeting this past Wednesday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released what is widely being described as a voter guide (PDF link), just as it has done ahead of every presidential election for the last 30 years. A long version of the bulletin insert is also available (PDF link).

Virtually without exception, the major media outlets, and most people I've seen discussing this statement in Left Blogistan, have seriously mischaracterized both its intent and its content. Take this story from the AP, which has been widely used as the starting point for a lot of online verbiage. It is headlined "Catholic bishops instruct voters," and here's how it starts:

BALTIMORE - Roman Catholic voters and lawmakers must heed church teaching on issues ranging from racism to abortion or risk their eternal salvation, U.S. bishops said Wednesday.

The bishops didn't recommend specific policies or candidates in the 2008 election, and emphasized that "principled debate" is needed to decide what bests promotes the common good. But they warned Catholics that their votes for politicians and laws affect more than just civic life.

"Political choices faced by citizens have an impact on general peace and prosperity and also may affect the individual's salvation," the bishops said. "Similarly, the kinds of laws and policies supported by public officials affect their spiritual well-being."

I'll give the AP credit for at least getting the fact that the document endorses neither any specific candidate nor either political party both correct and in the second paragraph. But that's about the only good thing I can say about the AP's reportage. The bulletin insert that will be all most Catholics are likely to see of this document (and not even all Catholics will see it, much less pay attention to it) contains none of the language found in the third paragraph I quoted above from the AP story.

Predictably, discussion of this document in Left Blogistan has frequently devolved into a bathetic orgy of Catholic-bashing. Judging by some of the comments I've seen--and we're not talking fringe sites, either--the Catholic Church and its leaders (some even go so far as to include all Catholics, clergy or lay) is the fount of all evil, the chief source of everything that is wrong or bad or out-of-whack in modern society. Religious belief itself, we are confidently (stridently, even) told, is a pathetic crutch suitable (and necessary) only for those too dumb or too frightened to face "reality." (Whatever that is supposed to entail.)

Looking at the ensuing hoo-ha, it's not hard to see why we on the left are often described as being, not just irreligious, but anti-religious. And that's just a load of bull--as is most of what has thus far passed for commentary on the U.S. Catholic bishops' statement.

Saturday, 11 August 2007

I heard on "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" this morning that apparently the New York Times is having to reduce the size of the paper in a cost-cutting measure. If this is any indication of the quality of the journalism they produce these days, it's no surprise why they're looking to cut costs:

Exactly one week after Mr. Schultz presided over Sunday worship at his home church here, he gave a sermon in the vast arena of the McCormick Convention Center in Chicago. Instead of the farmers, factory workers and tradesmen who typify his regular congregation, the audience for his denunciation of the Iraq war consisted of the self-proclaimed "netroots" attending Yearly Kos, the annual political and media convention organized by the Daily Kos Web site.

For three years, Mr. Schultz has supplied the voice of religion for Daily Kos, an epicenter of left-liberal activity with an otherwise fiercely secular bent. In 2004, Mr. Schultz began fielding prayer requests every Sunday night as part of a Daily Kos feature called "Brothers and Sisters." A year later, Daily Kos's founder, Markos Moulitsas, let Mr. Schultz spin off a formally connected online community, Street Prophets.

In 4.3 million page views since then, Mr. Schultz's readers have found comparatively little balm in Gilead. True to the take-no-prisoners style of blogosphere discourse, Street Prophets traffics more in calumny and condemnation, though with an extremely learned theological intelligence behind it.

Let me say, first, that I'm thrilled to see Dan get this kind of media attention, if only because it may finally begin to dent the public perception that religion somehow belongs to those who describe themselves as "conservatives," and that it only comes in evangelical/fundamentalist flavors. And I'm sure that Dan and Mrs. Pastor will be buying extra copies of the Times and sending them to all their relatives.

That said, however, the characterization that Samuel Freedman makes of the Street Prophets community in that last paragraph suggests to me (and I've been a member of the blog virtually since its inception, so I'm in a reasonably good position to know) that he spent virtually no time there--and what time he did spend was most likely in a very narrowly drawn sample of postings. Because while I've seen plenty of extreme erudition and theological intelligence on Prophecy Street (as we locals often call it), I can't say I've seen much in the way of either calumny or condemnation. It's a nice alliterative turn of phrase, but it totally fails to describe the blog I participate on.

Sunday, 01 July 2007

The United States will celebrate its 231st birthday on Wednesday. I feel confident in predicting that there will be at least a few celebrations taking place on that day during the course of which at least one person will say something to the effect that "America is a Christian nation" or else that it should get back to being one, or that what we need in this country is a dose of that good ol' time religion.

What is almost always meant by those kinds of dog-whistle phrases is that America should start (or continue) to exclude from membership--whether in the corridors of power or even more fundamentally, within the body politic itself--"those" people. People who don't believe in God at all. The Jews (this one's so popular I have to number them: 123). The Muslims. Essentially, anybody who does not think, believe, and/or worship exactly as they do.

In order to peddle such errant nonsense, those who espouse it must keep their listeners (readers, whatever) in ignorance about many of the basic tenets underlying the structure of our government and the bedrock principles on which it is based. And really, to refute them, all that is necessary is to quote a few snippets from the Constitution and one very early treaty:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land... (Article VI, clause 2)

...no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. (Article VI, clause 3)

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof... (First Amendment)

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. (U.S. Treaty with Tripoli, 1796-1797, Article 11)

I really don't know how it could be stated any simpler than that. The government of the United States is constitutionally barred from enforcing any kind of religious preference for holding an office of public trust or honor. It is likewise barred from establishing any one particular state religion (and, under the applicable Supreme Court precedent, even from favoring religion generally over non-religion--see Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 [1971]) and from interfering in any citizen's free exercise of his or her religious beliefs.

The Constitution further establishes itself, the laws made pursuant to its terms, and treaties entered into by the United States as "...the supreme Law of the Land..." One such treaty, ratified less than a decade after the adoption of the Constitution, and by and with the consent of many of the men who wrote the former document, clearly states that our government was not founded in any sense on Christian religious principles. I should think that the foregoing constituted ironclad proof that this country is not now, was never at any time in the past, nor can ever be made at some future date to become, a "Christian" nation.

There do seem to be an awful lot of people, however, who disagree with me on that. Which is one reason I'm participating in the Blog Against Theocracy event. Follow me below the fold for a few more reasons, and for information on how you can participate.

Tuesday, 17 April 2007

Via Andy at Towleroad, I learn that Fred Phelps and his merry band of haters are planning to preach picket at the funerals of some of the victims of the Virginia Tech shooting that occurred yesterday. I am trying very hard, though thus far not having a great deal of success, not to become what I hate, but suffice it to say that if I were face to face with Mr. Phelps and his supporters right now I think I would have great difficulty repressing the urge to rip their guts out through their mouths. With my bare hands.

Let me be very clear about one thing: these people do not speak for me or represent me in any way. I don't get to make the final call on the matter, but as far as I'm concerned, there can be absolutely no further doubt that they are not Christians in any meaningful sense of that word. No true Christian rejoices at the death of another human being--and doubly so one who was ripped untimely from this life and dispatched to the next. True Christians are the ones holding prayer vigils, donating food, or climbing into cars and airplanes to do what they can to help those affected by this hideous episode of senseless violence to regain something resembling a normal life.

The Phelps family has made something of a business (and quite a name--though that name is a hissing in the dark among decent folk) out of proclaiming God's hatred of some of God's creatures, most notably homosexuals. (They use a less acceptable word when proclaiming that God hates such people, but I won't use that term because I don't even want to contribute in a minor way to promoting their agenda of hatred.) I believe, on the contrary, that in the unlikely event that God hates anything that God has made, it is far more likely to be the Phelps clan than it is any of those whose funerals they picket.

Looking beyond the hubris of trying to tell God whom to love and whom to hate, the Phelps clan also seems utterly lacking in even the most basic elements of human compassion. If I were to accept, argumentis causa, that the Phelpsoi are correct in their theology (which I would vehemently deny at any other time except when trying to make a rhetorical point), how effective are they likely to be at getting it across and getting it accepted if they only proclaim it in the most callous and tasteless way possible, by shouting at the mourners gathered to bury a deceased loved one? No one with an ounce of compassion to wring from his or her soul would ever think of making a funeral into a political event, and any consultant worth his or her salt would absolutely tell anyone considering doing so that it was the worst possible way of attracting members and support for your pet cause.

Yet the famiglia Phelps does this kind of thing regularly, and have for years. How on earth, I wonder, do they get out of bed in the morning and look themselves in the mirror after spewing that much hatred toward so many people for so long? I cringe just at the thought of it, but these people seem to thrive on hating for a living. When we can answer the question of why that happens, we'll be a long way toward arriving at an answer for the related question of why things like the Virginia Tech shootings happen.

Sunday, 01 April 2007

Just in time for the start of Holy Week, the self-appointed, self-important blowhard at the head of the so-called "Catholic League" has--yet again--gotten his Opus Dei-approved camel's hair panties in a twist. This time, the object of his outrage is a roughly life-sized sculpture of Jesus done in milk chocolate that was set to be exhibited in a hotel in New York City.

Now I have to admit, as a friend of mine in Left Blogistan has already said, I'm always just a tiny bit suspicious whenever I hear about an artist producing something controversial. It's certainly within the realm of possibility that the artist failed to consider fully the implications of creating a life-sized, anatomically correct nude rendering of Jesus and planning to exhibit it during the holiest week of the Christian church year. It is equally within the realm of possibility (and considerably more likely, in my estimation) that the artist was counting on exactly the reaction he got.

Be that as it may. No less predictable was the outrage of William DonoWho, professional apoplectic where all things Catholic are concerned. (Or at least all things Catholic of which Mr. DonoWho approves, anyway. Funny how he never seems to be all that concerned about people exploiting the poor, stealing from widows and orphans--you know, all that liberal, sentimental, bleeding-heart shit that Jesus Christ actually cared about.) Like a bad penny, DonoWho is the gift that just keeps on giving--even when you wish more than anything else that he'd just shut his hateful piehole and slink away into the obscurity he so richly deserves.

Just as with the artist, though, I am always cynical about the ulterior motives behind any move DonoWho makes. Whenever he pops up on Faux News to spew his venom masquerading as the Gospel truth, I'm sure he gets a surge of donations and subscriptions. The cynic in me cannot help but see a necessary connection between the financial situation at the Catholic League and DonoWho's need to stir the pot a little at the start of a new fiscal quarter.